Tuesday, June 20, 2017

Root Beer Birthday

The new technique challenge on Splitcoast this week was to spell something out on a card using alphabet stamps and not have it be a typical greeting. My mind jumped to my niece, who is a root beer fanatic and connoisseur. This challenge was the incentive I needed to make a root beer card for her birthday.

1. I cut a 2" strip of whisper white and punched it with the scalloped tag topper punch. I then stamped the bottle form the Boys Only set by Doodlebug Design for Hampton Arts in tuxedo black Memento ink. Below the bottle I stamped the "all you need is" greeting from the Painted Posies set  in tuxedo black ink (I omitted the word "love" at the end of the greeting by not inking it.)

2. Finally it was time for the challenge. I took out my Alphabits set. I love this long-ago retired set, but I don't have a lot of occasions to use it. For this card, the italicized script font worked best with the font of the stamped greeting. I first stamped the entire image on my imaging sheet using the stamp-a-ma-jig. Then I cleaned the stamp off and started inking up single letters, lining them up using the stamp-a-ma-jig. I used my chocolate chip marker to ink the stamp because I wanted the words "root beer" to stand out a little. It turned out not to make much of a difference, but oh well.

3. I colored the bottle image using pumpkin pie and daffodil delight stampin' write markers. For the "root beer" I made a shadow outline on the left side of the bottle with my chocolate chip stampin' write marker, but then filled in the rest of the bottle with the brown marker from the flesh tone assortment of Blendabilities markers because I wanted a smooth color finish over the larger surface.

4. I used my paper cutter to trim off 1/8" off each side of the whisper white tag. I punched another tag out of a 2" strip of Daffodil Delight card stock. I layered the tags and added the multicolored striped Dashes, Dots & Checks ribbon that I bought at Michaels. I also added a strip of gold rhinestones that I cut from a Floral Garden Diamond Wrap ribbon that I picked up at Dollar Tree. (I love that diamond wrap ribbon, by the way, so much bling for a buck!) I trimmed off three more rhinestones and added them to the bottle to imitate soda bubbles. I adhered the rhinestones to the card stock using Tombow mono multi glue.

5. I used the three star stamp from the Starring You set to randomly stamp a piece of 4"x5.25" piece of whisper white in Daffodil Delight ink and adhered the white mat to the 4.25"x5.5" pumpkin pie card base. I also stamped the bottle cap image from the Boys Only set (a really unfortunate name, by the way; since when have soda bottles been only for boys?) three times in tuxedo black ink on whisper white card stock and used the coordinating framelit die to cut them out. I colored two of them with pumpkin pie and daffodil delight stampin' write markers. For the third bottle cap I used the pumpkin pie marker to color the entire cap. I did this because I knew I would be covering up the star image with the birthday greeting, which I stamped in basic black ink onto daffodil delight card stock. I used just the center of the image from the Engraved Greetings set by inking it up using my marker. I liked it because it was small enough to fit on the bottle cap and incorporated the star motif. I punched out the greeting with a 1/2" circle punch and adhered it to the bottle cap with snail.

6. The final step was to attach the tag and the bottle caps to the card base using dimensionals.

I think my root beer loving niece will love this card, and since her nickname is "Bling," she'll likely appreciate the rhinestones as well. Normally I'd have to wait until December to give this card to her, but this year we decided to celebrate her and her brother's 1/2 birthdays in the summer, so I'll be able to give it to her very soon!

Recipe (all products Stampin' Up! unless otherwise indicated):

Paper: whisper white, daffodil yellow; pumpkin pie
Ink: Memento tuxedo black, chocolate chip, pumpkin pie, daffodil delight
Stamps: Boys Only by Doodlebug Designs for Hampton Art, Painted Posies, Engraved Greetings, Starring You, Alphabits
Accessories: Dashes, Dots and Checks striped ribbon from Michael's; Floral Garden Diamond Wrap ribbon, scalloped tag top punch, 1/2" circle punch, Boys Only framelits from Sizzix

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